[Clipart] Some thoughts on the browsing interface

[Carl Worth]

Since I just joined, first let me say that I think the Open Clip Art
Library is a fantastic idea! Thanks to all the authors and others who
have already put so much work into this effort.

I had a couple of thoughts on the browsing interface. (I apologize if
all of this has been discussed already --- I have not read the archives
thoroughly.)

Currently, from the main page, it takes a few clicks before the user can
find any images to browse. I think the main page should immediately
present a browse interface with lots of different images. Functions such
as Upload can be moved to other pages, since the casual user can't make
use of them anyway, and the front page should be optimized more for
casual users.

Additionally, I think the browswer interface currently partitions things
too much. Currently, from what I can tell, each image appears only in a
single, fully-specified category. For example, if I click on the Animal
category, I see a single scorpion. If I don't know any better, I might
think that that's the only animal in the library, and move on. Instead,
I think the browse interface should present images in all of their
parent categories as well. This way, the categorization would provide a
way to filter the results, rather than a way to show new images.

As a consequence, the top-level browser interface would provide all
available images, rather than the current interface, which provides no
images at the top level. That seems like it would be a nice improvement.

Anyway, I hope that's helpful.

-Carl